The Niu surname (牛)
Niu (牛, Niú) is about 2.0 million people in mainland China (2013), the 108th most common surname; the province with the most Nius is Henan.
How do you pronounce the surname 牛?
As a surname, 牛 is pronounced Niú in Mandarin (written Niu without tone marks).
How is Niu written in Chinese?
It is written 牛 in both simplified and traditional Chinese.
How common is the Niu surname?
According to Yuan Yida and Qiu Jiaru's study of the 400 most common Chinese surnames (2013), about 2.0 million people in mainland China are named Niu — 0.15% of the population, ranking 108th.
Where in China is the Niu surname most common?
According to the same 2013 study, the province with the most people named Niu is Henan.
Is Niu in the Hundred Family Surnames?
Yes — 牛 is number 310 in the Hundred Family Surnames (Baijiaxing), a Song-dynasty primer. Its order reflects the rhyme of the text, not population.
What are the other English spellings of Niu?
The same Chinese surname is spelled differently by region and era — check all of them when searching immigration or overseas records:
- Hanyu Pinyin (Mainland China): Niu
- Wade–Giles (Taiwan, older usage): Niu
- Cantonese (Hong Kong, overseas): Jyutping ngau4
- Korean: 우
- Vietnamese: Ngưu
How do I build a Niu family tree?
Start with your own branch: record the ancestors you are sure of, then parents, siblings and descendants, generation by generation, with dates, spouses, migrations and burial places. Then invite relatives to fill in their own branches.
The KinTraces genealogy workbench lets a family build a Niu genealogy together online — relatives claim their own entries, adoptions and dual heirship are recorded on both sides, every change is logged, and the tree can be printed as a traditional Chinese genealogy (vertical register, Su or Ou style, pagoda chart) or a Western Register / Pedigree, or exported as GEDCOM.
What are Niu generation names (zibei)?
Many Chinese lineages share a generation poem: each generation takes one character from it in their given names, so cousins of the same generation share a character. Different Niu branches use different poems — there can be dozens for one surname — so a poem from another branch cannot simply be borrowed.
The most reliable source is your branch's own genealogy; otherwise, collect names from elders, gravestones and ancestral halls, look for the shared character in each generation, and compare with genealogies from the same ancestral place.
Surnames ranked nearby
Other common surnames in Henan
Sources: 2013 population figures, ranks and top provinces from Yuan Yida and Qiu Jiaru, The 400 Most Common Chinese Surnames (2013), as compiled in the English Wikipedia article "List of common Chinese surnames" (CC BY-SA 4.0); 2020 ranks from the Ministry of Public Security's 2020 national name report; Baijiaxing order from the Wikisource text.